Former mad scientist, bent on re-creating theories now takes pleasure in deconstructing music in all forms.

Friday, December 24, 2004

German Bold Italic

Geisha Kylie, German Type Faces and Güt Ja!In 1998 the Japanese DJ Towa Tei released a stuttering, techno-house composition called “G.B.I.” that features Kylie’s vocals as disembodied chirps.

HELLO. MY NAME IS GERMAN BOLD ITALIC. I AM A TYPEFACE. WHICH YOU HAVE NEVER HEARD BEFORE. WHICH YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN BEFORE. I CAN COMPLEMENT YOU WELL. ESPECIALLY IN RED. EXTREMELY IN GREEN. MAYBE IN BLUE BLUE BLUE

She penetrates into the heartless, cutting blitheness of the word.

YOU WILL LIKE MY SENSE OF STYLE. I FIT LIKE A GLOVE - OOH! GÜT JA! GÜT JA

Cumbersome as office machines on wheels, words—headlines, gossip, innuendo, the language of “hasbeenism”—form layers of occluded meaning, their signs sublimated to the function of marketing tools as they peek around her tiny head in luscious bouquets of sick color. Black and white look best on her, but Minogue is a canny colorist and her use of grays, reds and blues is never wrong. Because she is so plastic, she looks different in every video, every photograph, it took me several months to be able to identify her from day to day.

Directed by Stéphane Sednaoui, Ms. Minogue is seen prancing around Tokyo and New York dressed as a Geisha girl - telling us about her like for type faces and colours. Ornate hairstyle and elaborate kimono discarded, "G.B.I." is actually a brilliant slice of Japanese avant-garde pop.

The track is so self-consciously mechanical that it's tempting to read all kinds of profound social insights into it. It seems like a small bit of brilliance to create a song with a typeface as a narrator, like some kind of comment on the coldness and distance of computer-mediated relationships - but it works!